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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

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Independent business blogs are blogs that aren't supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don't need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that don't get as much publicity.

This week, I'm pointing you to posts on leadership as a performing art, improving engagement, clear expectations, the seven deadly sins of leadership, and leadership across the ages.

From Mary Jo Asmus: Stunning Leadership
"We are familiar with the concept of practice to get better at something in the performing arts. Even though we don’t think of leadership having an element of practice in it, in reality we have the opportunity to practice and get better at it every day. Most of us need to be more conscious and intentional of our practice, not unlike those practicing an art form."

Wally's Comment: Leadership is very much a performing art. Like other performing arts, learning and performing are intertwined. And, also like other performing arts, diligent work on basic activities makes stunning success possible.

I have never practiced ballet, so I don't know about the basics there. But I remember a Marine instructor who told us that he expected us to be "brilliant at the basics." That takes conscious, deliberate effort to improve.

From Winning Workplaces: Simple Performance Management Practices that Drive Up Employee Engagement
"Most of us are familiar with Gallup's employee engagement research and the twelve statements they use to measure it. When I look at the list, it strikes me that there are some basic employee performance management practices that, if done well, address most of these needs.  They include:"

Wally's Comment: Mary Jo pointed out that the basics create the foundation on which great performance and great results can be created. It's about simplicity. In Ruthless Focus , Tom Hall and I make the case for a ruthless focus on a simple strategy and business basics. In this post, Sean Conrad, of Halogen Software, outlines some simple basics that improve engagement.

From Great Leadership: Sharing Your Expectations
"I’m sure most Great Leadership leaders have been though management 101 classes, read books or blogs, and have heard about the importance of setting expectations. We’ve all heard about SMART goals, inspecting what we expect, the importance of job descriptions, and yada, yada, yada. All good stuff, and I’ll tell you, it’s true. So why don’t more managers do it? Is it that, like a lot of management and HR practices, we make it sound more complicated than it needs to be? If you’ve ever sat though a lesson on how to write SMART goals, you might come to that conclusion too."

Wally's Comment: "Clear and reasonable expectations" are one of the "Eight Characteristics of Highly Effective Workplaces." In this post, Dan McCarthy suggests that you'll do a better job of delivering clear and reasonable expectations if you take a step back and take 30 minutes or so to clarify your own thinking. He even suggests a process.

From Terry Starbucker: The Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership
"Leaders get tested every day. Decisions must be made, problems must be solved, and action must be taken. Of all the tests we face, however, the most critical to success revolve around the people we lead, and how we lead them."

Wally's Comment: The Roman Catholic Church divides sins into the "venial" (relatively minor) and the "deadly," "mortal," or "cardinal" sins. Those are the ones that can destroy the effects of an otherwise good life. The idea of seven deadly sins goes all the way back to the Fourth Century. Terry Starbucker describes how those sins can also kill your leadership effectiveness.

From HR Thoughts: Leadership Across The Ages
"It's amazing how timeless characteristics like leadership are. One thing I like doing (geek alert) when I get a few minutes, is to look through the Google Book catalog. There are some amazing gems in there, and that's where I find little things like info on how to do onboarding from a company manual in the early 1900's and the book preface that inspired this post."

Wally's Comment: Ben Eubanks' guest post makes a powerful point that's often ignored. Leadership isn't a set of whiz-bang techniques, newly sprung from the brow of some popular leadership guru. And that means you can learn leadership lessons from the noble Greeks and Romans as well as from … well, you'll just have to read the post to find out.

Bonus: Erin Schreyer's "What really makes you a leader?" post on the Lead Change Group blog inspired over seventy comments (at last count). The post and the comments raise lots of issues that will get you thinking.

That's it for this week's selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my regular post on "Leadership Reading to Start Your Week" which features five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. The last issue had pointers to articles about emergency response, frugal engineering, ranking employees, virtual teams, and identifying future leaders.

My latest book, Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business is out. You can read more about it on my blog or just click over to Amazon and buy a few.

And be sure to check out Weekly Leader where I'll try to get you thinking about The Question of the Week.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.